Republicans in both chambers of Congress have scheduled events and votes on Iraq all week ‘” the Senate as it debates a defense spending bill, the House as it holds a full day of debate today on a resolution on Iraq.

Officially, the House debate will be the first time the chamber has argued the pros and cons of the invasion and occupation of Iraq since the war began more than three years ago. But Democrats, who have repeatedly called for debate on the war, have denounced this week’s events as little more than a political trap to embarrass them and force acquiescence with the administration’s policy.

And the GOP puts the war at the center of the elections of 2006:

GOP officials intend to base the midterm election campaign partly on talking up the war, using speeches and events to contrast President Bush’s policies against growing disagreement among leading Democrats over whether to support immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Open, long and serious debate over the central issue of our time, and conducting the elections as a referendum on the necessity of continuing the war on terror are exactly what the serious party should be doing. (See Chapters 1 and 2 in Painting the Map Red.)

Finally, patience is our ally. We need not defeat the Americans, only outlast them. Have they not abandoned every battlefield they ever entered? Besides Germany, Japan, Korea, Kosovo and Afghanistan, of course. But just as they left Somalia when their ‘Democrats’ took power, so will they leave Iraq when the criminal Zionist Bush regime is replaced by a slightly less criminal, albeit equally Zionist, Democratic regime. The Democrats wish to quit the war and return to their important issues, such as permitting men to marry, have a child with the cloning of cells, and then abort it. Such a people cannot fight; they can only beseech the United Nations to send Danes to frown from great distances. And I need not remind you that no one was ever killed by a 226 kilogram laser-guided Dane.